enmodes GmbH, a company based in Aachen, Germany, announced today they have won the Emerging Medical Innovation Valuation Competition of the 2017 Design of Medical Devices Conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with their ground-breaking technology RAS-Q®, a novel respiratory assist system currently under development.

The RAS-Q® technology will offer a new therapeutic approach for patients suffering from pulmonary hypertension. According to the company, RAS-Q® uses an innovative approach by mimicking the elasticity of the lungs, making the device more efficient. The pressure loss across the device is reduced by 80%, cardiopulmonary stress relief is improved, and the internal flow path can be optimized to improve washout. This will allow affected patients for the first time to be mobilized again. The effectiveness of this process is comparable to what is nowadays seen in VAD patients who can restart all kinds of physical activities such as hiking, sailing, golf or motorbiking.

One week prior to the competition in Minneapolis, the in-vivo results of RAS-Q® were presented for the first time at the37th annual meeting of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation in San Diego, California. The presentation was given by Prof. Bart Meyns, head of cardiac surgery at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, who is responsible for supervising the animal trials. “In 12 acute animal trials, pulmonary hypertension was reduced from up to 70 mmHg back to almost baseline, 29 mmHg, and right heart afterload was reduced by 41%,” according to Prof. Meyns. Chronic animal trials are planned for mid-2017.

More about enmodes GmbH:

Germany-based company enmodes GmbH provides design and engineering services to medical device companies, with a focus on validated computational analyses and optimizations. The company offers assistance and consulting for a wide range of translational biomedical developments, from small research projects to complex ventures.

More about RAS-Q®:

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the 4th common cause of death, whereby most of the cases are related to pulmonary hypertension (PH) and consequent right heart failure. Medication can be used to manage symptoms but is very costly at ~10.000 €/month. No system is available today to support PH patients specifically, because current technology is non-physiological, has high pressure loss, and has a high risk for thrombosis. Current setups also require additional outboard components, rendering the setup overly complex and foreclosing on patient mobility.

RAS-Q® is the first device using a disruptive, patented technology of an incorporated compliant breathing function, yielding very low flow resistance and maintaining pulsatile flow within the device. This allows high flow rates through the device without the use of a pump. RAS-Q® provides high gas exchange and, more importantly, reduces the root cause of patient complication, the high blood pressure in the pulmonary system. Reducing pulmonary arterial pressure back to tolerable levels protects the heart and vasculature from further progression of the disease. The compliance and consequent pulsatile flow within the device enable optimal washout and reduce the risk of clotting. RAS-Q® will offer increased mobility and physical capability, significantly improving quality of life and therapeutic outcomes.